


Run faster

by Goonlalagoon



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: (new to Ao3 so if using wrong convention to tag such things please just come shout at me!), American Politics, Gen, Homophobia, Includes reference to various unpleasant political/social views, Islamophobia, Optomism in the face of entropy, Racism, anti-abortion rhetoric, including (brief) presence or mention of:, though with a deliberate slant of 'screw that we can be better'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 01:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11521653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goonlalagoon/pseuds/Goonlalagoon
Summary: After the US election results, Diane Duane posted a comment on her Tumblr saying ‘Entropy is running: run faster’, and it sort of spawned a fanfic?(cross-posting a bunch of fic over from Tumblr from the past few months)





	Run faster

Nita watches the election results pour in, heart sinking steadily as states on the map turn red. Her dad and Dairine have forgone sleep as well, watching with bated breath and unhidden dread. Nita’s knitting needles click quietly, gleaming with Speech light. The work reminds her of building her charm bracelet, what feels like so long ago, and it’s a similar thing. This isn’t to hold spells in a matrix, but it’s spells worked into knitted cloth to hold warmth, to give a small sense of comfort, to keep the rain off and hopefully offer some protection, although that bit of the spell is less reliable. It depends on what the harm coming your way is.

The work soothes her, the knowledge that she’ll stitch these spell squares together and drop them off at the homeless shelter, and a few more people will have some protection from the winter cold and rain. This was one of the projects that didn’t get too far into the Invitational. The judges had praised it and it had been entered into the manual, but it had been deemed not to sufficiently meet the innovation and development criteria. Still, the judges’ praise for the concept and it’s applications had made sure everyone kept an interested eye on the kid’s progress, and knitting had become a relatively common Wizardly pastime.  
Dairine didn’t have the patience for it, but she was busy tapping away on Spot, figuring out a way to get the warmth to solar charge and muttering about routines to optimise efficiency so the blanket would only radiate on the side in contact with the user. Their dad had brought some work home, and was making up mini bouquets. Nita glanced at the screen to watch another state go red, and though that his idea to give people free flowers if they looked down tomorrow might be needed. Dairine stares at the screen as the final result is declared, and her face twists while Spot whirs reassuringly. She meets Nita’s own horrified, resigned gaze.  
“Entropy is running.”

* * *

 

Someone spits at Kit to go home to Mexico at school the next day, and he blinks slowly, unimpressed. Nita shifts her feet, teeth gritted, but knows before Kit even shoots her a mental message not to step in. The boy looks at Kit’s face and hesitates, whatever bile was waiting on his tongue withering at the cold glance of someone who’s dealt with far worse than a handful of schoolyard slurs on a regular basis. Kit shrugs calmly.  
“We’re one planet in a universe so big you can’t even comprehend its size. We’re one ninth of our own set of planets. You think which landmass on this cosmic speck of dirt my grandparents came from matters, on a scale like that?”

Nita remembers Ireland, Ronan being - well, _Ronan_ , before he grew up a bit, and a stern voice asking where the line fell. Where was local? This city, this country, this lump of rock sticking out of the sea, but nowhere else? Where was the line drawn?  
_Here, this planet - this universe,_ Nita thinks, _I’ve stood on the moon and watched darkness try to swallow all of this whole, and I’ve worked with people you wouldn’t even realise we’re sentiment beings to save it, all of it, the people who are like me and the people who aren’t like me and even the people I hope are_ nothing _like me because I don’t want to be anything like_ them _\- we saved it for everyone, and for ourselves, and for no-one but just because it was there to save and we were the ones who had a chance of saving it._  
She gets a brief flash of Kit’s mind down their bond and shivers. He’s thinking of the Pullus too, a little, but mostly his mind is fixed on the red rock of Mars, the legacy of two races so trapped in hate that they destroyed themselves. He remembers their fear, their hate, and the terrible, almost funny in it’s sheer horror, realisation that none of them remembered why they hated each other in the first place, just that it was somehow the most important thing about them. He remembers it all in his head, a ghost in his own skin, and remembers thinking _and I wanted to find you,_ disappointed and disgusted.

* * *

 

Skeret sends her a message, keeping an eye on the situation from general concern about progress of entropy on a world he has personal affection for, and from very specific concern for a handful of people.  
_I don’t have a basement, but there’s a few spare supply closets we could clear a wall in for you guys, anytime you need._

* * *

 

Nita isn’t certain what prompts her to go up to the moon that evening, when she has two essays to do and a section of Speech vocabulary as thick as her finger in the manual to learn. As soon as she spots the small figure she thinks she knows.  
“Hey, Darryl.” He doesn’t stir, so she sits next to him, staring out at the view. She thinks she’ll never grow tired of seeing the planet hanging below her, and it strikes her that she’s a potential future planetary and Darryl is Earth’s lone, precious abdal, and she thinks she knows why she had the urge out of the blue to pop up to the moon for some contemplation time.

  
“At least last time there was a reason for it all. I knew there was something up here twisting everyone.” Nita glances up at the sky, reflexively checking for the dark presence of the Pullus. “It was the worst in people, but at least we knew it was being dragged out of them.” She’s wondered what it was like, staying on Earth while the clock ran down, as the older wizards lost their wizardry and the world came closer and closer to its end. Their role in the war was terrifying, fear and pressure and the crushing feeling that there was nothing left, but she’s guiltily glad that she was off planet. Darryl doesn’t have that option, even if he doesn’t know why - though at least being an abdal he apparently won’t want to, anyway, so it isn’t like Irina and the Senior Wizards are stopping him doing something he wants to do.  
“It’s the same reason.” She’s felt the Lone Power in the speeches, in some of the rallies, in the spread of red like blood over a map. They all have. “It’s the same reason, even if this time it’s inside people’s heads not up here. And we’ll burn it out, Darryl, we will, even if it takes years and years.” He gives her a small smile, but there’s something almost artificial about it, like he just knows he should smile rather than wanting to. Her heart twists.

  
More than once in the run up, Nita had wished she could simply work a Wizardry to stave off the possibility of…this. But she hadn’t needed the long, involved discussions over dinner with Tom and Carl and her dad to know why she couldn’t, even if some of their scenarios hadn’t occurred to her. It was about choice, in the end - they could campaign and talk and convince, make their cases and try to lead by example, but you couldn’t rattle off a sequence in the Speech to just change people’s mind, and any attempts to do so would be a direct win for the Lone Power - though from where Nita is standing, it seems to be doing pretty well now anyway.

  
Darryl is intrinsically good; someone had suggested, only half joking, that they send him to smile nicely and convince people to be better people, but Nita had shot down the idea before Tom or Carl could. Of course the kid could, like all of them, do his own talking and campaigning and try to convince anyone he knew about the future of the country, but sending him to the real rallies? People were scared of that goodness, felt almost powerless in the face of it. It made Nita want to be better, but it made other people feel weak and wrong and angry, and while Darryl could take care of himself just fine a kid disappearing when someone threw a rock at him wouldn’t exactly help matters.  
Darryl is a wizard, and he’s an abdal, but he’s also a kid, and he’s a black autistic one. No matter how much Nita has flinched at things she’s heard on the news and in the debates, he’s got more to worry about on the personal level here.

  
“We _will._ ” She repeats like a promise, and she only realises she’s dropped into the Speech when his eyes widen, just a little. The responsibility she’s just given herself scares her a little, but she knows she means it. There’s a little bit of the Lone Power at the bottom of everyone’s soul, she knows, but she’ll work and work to get as many people to stop letting it whisper in their ear as she can.

* * *

 

S’ree sings mournfully when Nita and Kit drop by for a visit and to check on the harbour cleaning Wizardry. Nita vaguely realises she doesn’t even find it odd to be discussing American politics with a whale and wonders if she should, but she doesn’t, not any more. They live on the same planet, after all. S’ree worries about the sea warming and rising, about pollution and every other way the humans on land affect the sea. Nita flicks her tail helplessly, wishing she could promise that the protections in place for the environment will stay, and knowing it isn’t certain enough for it not to be a little too close to a lie. She can promise to work on figuring out some way of speeding up the clean up after oil spills, though, so she does. The whale also asks, anxiously, about everything else said and promised during the election, not caring that they don’t affect her remit directly. Kit glances at Nita and sends a thought her way.  
_If only as many people cared as much about other humans as she does._ Nita hums in agreement.

* * *

 

In a five minute break from an intervention to stabilise an earthquake prone fault, someone tries to pull Mehrnaz’s headscarf off from over her hair, telling her that it’s disgusting, that she shouldn’t let men dictate what she has to wear when she’s in America, that people will think she’s a terrorist or something. The moment the girl’s fingers close over the fabric, she frowns. When she’s barely pulled the bright cloth back a centimetre while Dairine’s protege looks calmly back at her, her expression furrows.  
She snatches her hand away when the cloth is disturbed by less than an inch. Nita, mouth already open to snap out a demand to know _what exactly do you think you’re doing?_ and Dairine, already drawing breath to reel off a string of the Speech that will send the offending girl cowering, stare.  
“Uh. Sorry.” Mehrnaz sniffs dismissively, and Dairine smiles briefly, recognising that expression. Mehrnaz’s family caus

ed a lot of problems, but she certainly learnt from the masters when it came to killing people with a look. The girl slinks away. Nita keeps half an eye on her, thinking that if no-one else does, she may wander over for a chat. Irina beats her to it, and Nita politely turns her full attention back to Mehrnaz. If the Planetary giving her a personal talking to doesn’t convince the girl her behaviour was unacceptable, nothing will.

Dairine is peering at the loose edge of Mehrnaz’s scarf in fascination, and Nita looks over her shoulder. Neat Speech stitching gleams gently back at her. Nita whistles, impressed. Anyone who tries to pull the cloth away without permission - there’s even an allowance worked in for if there’s been some kind of head injury - won’t be harmed, exactly, but they’ll feel exactly the shame they should. Nita realises Mehrnaz is trembling, just a little, and nudges Dairine. The two wander off to get a drink, and Nita lets them go. Dairine will make the younger girl feel safe to feel upset, and figure out what they can do about it. She decides that’s her signal to get back to work. She asks Bobo to make a note to remind her to look up the stitching Mehrnaz had used, or to ask where she got the cloth. It’s a neat trick, and might even have a lasting impression, if they’re lucky.  
Matt winds up working next to her for a while, and glances sidelong at her troubled face.

  
“You weren’t expecting to deal with it here, were you?” Nita realises with a jolt that he’s right. She’d assumed Wizards were somehow better than this, inherently, even with Ronan having been a bit of an ass when they first met and Penn not exactly being in line for the title of Mr Gender Equality for some time. She shakes her head, and he shrugs. “People are people. Sometimes they find it easier to accept a talking tree as a sentient being than a human who’s a little different from them.” Nita glares at her hands. She knows he’s right, but she wishes he wasn’t.  
“Wizards should be better.” He nods, shrugs, and she can’t quite find it in her to ask if he’s had to deal with this too. She wonders if her passing guilt-ridden comment about not knowing and his jokey “I’m Gay” t-shirt in response caused him problems, and hopes not. She wonders if there’s any kind of Wizardry she could work to prevent it from ever being a problem.  
“ _People_ should be better.”

* * *

 

Ronan calls through the manual to catch up, which mostly means muttered insults about both the election and the whole Brexit situation. Nita thinks she sees the echo of the Defender in him still, sometimes, that harsh protectiveness that made him so difficult to begin with, until he sorted it out in his head and managed to draw lines between his personal love for his own land, the Power’s adoration of Ireland, his own moody anger, and whatever other mess of feelings came of having an immortal spirit sharing part of your head.

  
“Oh, yeah, ‘Mela and I have got a new investment going.” Nita groans, already imagining a galactic empire of a business. Ronan laughs, lounging at his desk and peering absently at some homework he really should have gotten done earlier. “Nothing major, just a - sideline. Y’know there’s all that kerfuffle about the Tolberone shape changing? Well, we’ve been buying up and exporting to various of the usual suspects.” He smirks. “And fifty per cent of profits are going to charities of some description. Carmela’s sweet talking the entertainment system to pick out people who need help funding anything to do with citizenship papers and the like. Afraid my share of the charity cut is going into something this side of the planet, but we figure as some of our nearest and dearest supporters, you and Kit can pick out what happens with the last third.”  
Nita largely stopped paying attention when she realised that Mela was apparently planning to help fund people through their US citizenship process and passport fees using money from literal aliens, but she gives him a thumbs up as she wheezes with laughter.

* * *

 

Bobo nudges Nita one Saturday morning to let her know something new has popped up in the manual she might be interested in. It takes three attempts before she’s able to keep her attention enough to finish reading it, but she’s grinning even as she wishes Bobo hadn’t made it an active demo to wind her up. It’s a new Speech font and poster design, a custom edit of the one they’d used for the Invitational signs. Nita rattles off a message offering to put posters up around the local Planned Parenthood centres if no-one else is already on it. Signs that divert attention only when someone feels threatened is second best to keeping them from feeling at risk in the first place, but it’s a more energy efficient Wizardry and right now it’s a good starting point. They’re all stretched thin - they always are, she thinks wryly - but it’s something.

  
They arrive a few days later, and she heads out for a day of subtly sticking up posters. She plans to combine it with a drop by Grand Central to talk to Rhiaow about some nitty-gritty gating, but when she turns the corner into the station she spots the familiar black cat twining around a child’s ankles, a smile gradually breaking across the tear-stained face. Nita doesn’t know what happened or why, but Rhiaow’s status in the manual pings in the back of her mind as ‘busy’, so she finds a seat in the deli and starts working on a refined version of her old cancer work. The manual updated with it automatically, but she figures the more the next wizard knows the better their odds of success, and there’s only so much the manual can do without personal input. She can afford to wait for Rhiaow to be done giving a child reason to smile for the day.

* * *

 

On a whim, Nita takes an evening trip out to Pluto. She wonders if she’s imagining the slight thrum under her feet, or if she’s being welcomed by someone who usually watches from the shadows. She sits in a bubble of atmosphere and casts an amused glance at the crevasse she once dropped her sister’s bed down. She feels something stir in the planet again, and smiles to herself - to the world.  
_Resonance. If you can just hear the right frequency, we all can - one way or another._

* * *

 

 “Entropy is running.” Dairine mutters sourly, and Nita nods glumly. Entropy is certainly running, and she thinks she can almost feel it speeding up as she sits, knitting needles lying in her lap. Dairine is looking almost lost. Soon she’ll be angry, Nita knows, and then she’ll seem more like Dairine - Dair is always more herself when she’s fighting for something, whether it’s blasting the Lone Power into a sun or battering away at her own ignorance on something, anything. But for now there’s a dullness in her sister’s eyes. Nita feels it in her own. She’s felt it before; sometimes, it seems like the Lone Power is winning. They know it will overall, of course. But usually it’s the end game. One day, the war that started when entropy began will end in loss, but it rarely feels like it’s here and now. It’s always someday, far away, and they dig their heels in and push it a day further. It’s a losing battle, they all know, but they all know that doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do about it, here and now, and tomorrow, and the day after that.  
“Neets, what do we _do?_ ”

  
Nita picks up her knitting needles. Warmth, protection, safety, and a special spell thread stitch Dair worked out that sends out a low level psychological signal of comfort, and shrugs.  
“What we always do. Run faster.”


End file.
